Lo­cal he­roes

MSP praises 780 on bone mar­row list

James Kelly MSP has thrown his sup­port be­hind a blood can­cer char­ity.

Mr Kelly has urged lo­cals through­out Ruther­glen and Cam­bus­lang to get in­volved with the An­thony Nolan Trust by join­ing its bone mar­row donor reg­is­ter and help­ing in the fight against blood can­cer.

Fig­ures re­leased last week show there are cur­rently more than 780 self­less peo­ple will­ing to do­nate their stem cells, or bone mar­row, to help a stranger.

And the char­ity are hop­ing oth­ers will join up.

Mr Kelly said: “There are 780 he­roes on the reg­is­ter here in Ruther­glen and Cam­bus­lang but the chal­lenge con­tin­ues.

“I’m hunt­ing for more cru­saders to sign up to­day, so we can fight blood can­cer to­gether.

“It is some­thing truly heroic to give a stranger a sec­ond chance at life. This is why I’m proud to cham­pion this cause to my con­stituents.”

He added: “I was in­spired to join the list of bone mar­row donors when a young man in Ruther­glen died a few years ago, and the An­thony Nolan Trust seemed to be a good way of try­ing to help in the fu­ture.”

Cur­rently a per­fect match can only be found for 60 per cent of trans­plant pa­tients. To join the An­thony Nolan reg­is­ter you must be 16-30 and in good health. It in­volves fill­ing out a sim­ple on­line form and spit­ting into a tube.

Ann O’Leary, head of reg­is­ter devel­op­ment at An­thony Nolan, added: “We are de­lighted that Ruther­glen MSP James Kelly has been in­spired to en­cour­age oth­ers to sign up as donors.

“Do­nat­ing is an in­cred­i­bly self­less thing to do and will give some­one with blood can­cer their best chance at sur­vival.”